Google donates $2m to Wikipedia

Google has reached deep into its wallet and handed over a massive grant to the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia and a number of other sites. The $2,000,000 donation will be used to make Wikipedia easier to use, says the charity.

"Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the internet" said Google co-founder Sergey Brin. "This vast repository of community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is online". The two organisations have partnered a few times before, but this is the first direct cash transfer between them.

Wikipedia normally depends on tens of thousands of tiny donations from its users to keep it going - holding a yearly funding drive that recently brought in $8m. Google has previously donated to other projects, including Mozilla's Firefox browser.

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, said: "We are very pleased and grateful. This is a wonderful gift, and we celebrate it as recognition of the long-term alignment and friendship between Google and Wikimedia. Both organisations are committed to bringing high quality information to hundreds of millions of individuals every day, and to making the Internet better for everyone".